Jonesie_Mac

Wow, thanks. How did everyone's test go? Anyone else that took theirs recently wanna add some advice to this to help out our future fellow nurses?

Amazon.com: NCLEX-RN Strategies, Practice, and Review, 2013-2014 (9781609788919): Barbara J. Irwin, Judith A. Burckhardt: Books Have you tried a Kaplan book? This helped me immensely with not only tests, but the way I think in clinicals. It has really good rationals about what is write, what is wrong, and how to think about it critically even when you know very little about the topic. Only 35 bucks new.

Another favorite nursing student caricature is the one who decides that s/he needs to co-teach. In my skills lab, we have a girl who paraphrases everything the teacher says right after she says it. She's not doing it to check for her own understanding, she's trying to reiterate it for the rest of us! It comes of as very arrogant, but we just try to laugh it off.

I have one of these in every class! There has got to be some sort of underlying thought process that causes people to go off on a tangent about themselves/family/loosely related story during class! Tell me if you ever figure it out! haha.

We have a girl that nods her approval or shakes her head disapprovingly at everything the teacher says throughout the entire lecture. It is so distracting that no one wants to sit behind her! It's so funny to watch her endorse the lecture. We have another guy that either challenges what the teacher says with a "Yeah... But!" Or, he comes up with off the wall scenarios and asks what you would do in the situation. Very hypothetical, never heard of scenarios. The instructor will tell him that you can usually figure it out with simple prioritizing. Then comes the "Yeah... But!" And... before you know it 45 minutes of lecture is wasted and we didn't get important info for the test. Sigh.

We have lots of LPNs in our program that didn't go for their NCLEX and enrolled directly into RN school. No one was questioned, especially if they graduated with honors. And, guess what? Pharm is a coreq. So, enrolling in a (good) RN school seems like a win-win.

I really hope you pass! You've come this far! Only a few more days til graduation! The seniors at my SUNY school are having this problem with a very condescending teacher that just started teaching. She doesn't respond well to questions at all. They just keep trying to support each other. The end is in sight!

My friend and I discussed what we would do if we failed nursing and had to wait a year. We decided that we would get ahead on our coreq classes and start some of the classes for our graduate degree if we ran out. Or, maybe, just do nursing part-time once we were back in. Maybe doing something productive with your time will make you feel a little better about the extra year. Good luck!

I was extremely surprised when I heard that our class that had started with 129 had dropped to 85 after the first semester. In our school, people don't have the option of withdrawing and getting delayed a semester. If they fail, they have to reapply next year and hope to get in, so it makes it that much more stressful. The trend I saw was that when people weren't doing well in the class, they kept it up. They would keep saying they needed to study more or study longer, but they never got ahead. If your studying method isn't working or if you aren't understanding the material, you need to adapt/update your approach. For example: If you spend 6 hours making flashcards and only have enough time after to study them for an hour, that's fine. If you are getting the grade. If you do that and aren't passing, then change your strategy! That's seven hours of study time you are wasting if your approach doesn't work. If I do badly on a test, I always ask someone who did better how they studied. Studying efficiently is far more important that studying more.

I am currently living off of student loans. I have one more year of school left and I am hoping to get enough scholarships for a full ride. Otherwise, between my spouse and I, we are looking at 60k of loans upon graduation. It's incredibly stressful, so I totally understand the boat you are in.

I'm an auditory learner and a commuter. I really loved studying the body parts out loud in a study group, but when I couldn't do that, I found videos of instructors going over the models I would get tested on. I would watch it all the way through, then pause it and see if I could do it myself. I learned them very, very quickly this way. In lab, use your phone to record the instructor running through it and take plenty of pictures. Then, you will be able to study wherever and whenever, even on break. Again, this is best for auditory. Taking/drawing pictures and filling in diagrams might be the way to go if you are a visual learner and can't get to the models themselves.

The nursing program at Suny Canton has moved to accepting 90 applicants. Some are accepted spring semester while a few slots are left open for people to be accepted after spring semester. These people are typically notified during the summer. It is a very competitive program. You must have Biology, Math, and Chemistry already. Nursing classes are graded on a nursing scale where 75 is passing with a C. Sciences are graded where 70 is a C and is needed to pass. There are three of these, two Anatomy and Physiology classes and a Microbiology class. In all other co-requisites, a D is allowed (60). The only way to attend part-time is to do all other co-requisites before being accepted. All the nursing classes themselves always start in the fall and cannot be moved or taken at different times or semesters. You can take Pharm classes online during breaks and take Nursing Trends the winter before, but those are the only flexible classes. I would highly recommend that you take A+P 1 before starting nursing. A+P 2 and nursing go hand-in-hand, so they are really helpful to take at once if you cannot get your A+P out of the way before starting. I was actually planning on talking to our school about starting a nursing advice fb page or forum so that current nursing students could advise pre-nursing students about the process, teachers, grades, what to expect, etc. Feel free to ask more questions or message me. I am pretty comfortable answering most things related to the nursing program.

Midterm grades came out today and I have a 4.0! I still have a long way to go, though!

I registered my text book online and it gave me access to NCLEX questions and material that wasn't in the book. So, I usually do all the NCLEX in the book, then do all of the NCLEX online. I always read all of the rationals and look up any answer I do not understand (even in it's the wrong answer, I wanna know what all the vocab is). Making flash cards works for my classmates and is really cool if you have the free time to do it.